Armageddon Crazy

After the first couple of times he had seen Cynthia Kline, he had accessed her departmental records. All he had gotten were prints and a picture and a few short paragraphs of background. He had attempted to go further, to get through to her personal file, home address, and recruitment investigation report, but he had run into a privacy block. The computer had demanded an AC-19 clearance and details of how the required data applied to an ongoing investigation. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Winters had garbaged the request. Unfortunately the images of Cynthia Kline had not gone away. If anything, they had become more intense. If they did not go away soon, he would be forced to go to see one of those women on Fifteenth Street again.

Kline

Cynthia Kline walked quickly out of the junior deacons' squad room and headed for the elevators. She needed a cup of coffee and maybe an illicit cigarette in the women's rest room. She was certain that little bastard Bernie Winters had been staring at her again. There was something creepy about those large pale-blue eyes under the blond brushcut. He was so typical of the repressed, small-town kid who enlisted in the deacons. On one level, they believed that they were the wrath of God, but deeper down they were constantly at war with themselves, so constantly on the run from their perfectly normal impulses that they ended up being twisted out of shape by the conflict and the shame. There was probably nothing more sinister to Winters' stares than the usual banked-up horniness, but he still made her nervous. She kept reminding herself that she had encountered more than enough of it in the four months since the organization had planted her as a sleeper in the clerical auxiliary of the deacons. Her nervousness could probably be chalked up to the feet that Winters was part of the team that was actually hunting the Left-hand Path. The team appeared to be getting nowhere, but if it ever did get lucky and blow the organization apart, she would be one of the first to be arrested. If they did not hang her outright, she would certainly die slowly in Joshua or one of the other camps.

In the third-floor women's rest room, a burly, masculine directoress was inspecting her eyebrows in the mirror over the line of sinks. As Cynthia entered, the woman turned and gave her an unmistakably appraising look. She treated Cynthia to a half smile. "Praise the Lord, my dear."

Cynthia nodded absently and avoided the woman's eyes. "Yes… praise the Lord."

It was damn lucky that paranoia and prudery looked so much alike. The women in the female branch of the deacons seemed a good deal less repressed than their male counterparts.

The door closed behind the directoress, and Cynthia Kline allowed herself a silent sigh of relief. She let herself into a stall, dumped the pile of printouts that she was taking up to the twenty-third floor on the cistern, and rummaged for her pack of cigarettes. The twenty-third floor could wait. Policy frowned on the idea of deacons, directoresses, or even the clerical auxiliary smoking or drinking, but an official blind eye was turned to the odd smoke in the bathroom. No one could be perfect all the time.

When she was through, she dropped the butt in the toilet bowl and flushed, then emerged from the stall to find a senior clerical assistant sniffing the air with a disapproving expression.

"Your body is a temple of the Lord, my dear. It's a shame to pollute it with nicotine. "

Cynthia nodded. "I know, but it's been a rough day."

"Some days are like that. I'd pray about it if I was you." The woman started to vigorously wash her hands.

Cynthia wondered how much more she could take. It was very tempting to just give it all up and run for Canada. In the begi

There was commotion outside in the corridor. Uniformed NYPD in full riot gear were milling in front of the elevators waiting for a descending car. Another clerical auxiliary was standing back against the wall letting them go by. Cynthia did the same thing.

"What's the panic?" she asked.

"Bread riot at a supermarket."

"Where?"

"A&P at Twentieth and Eighth."

"Deliveries didn't happen?"

"Something like that."

Cynthia Kline cursed under her breath. It was uncomfortably close to where she lived on Ninth Avenue. She might well have problems getting home. Suddenly she caught herself. Something was happening to her attitude. There had been a time when she would have been overjoyed at a bombing and a riot in the same day. It would have been proof that the regime was really coming unglued. But events like this had become mere nuisances. She needed to watch herself.

1346408 Stone

1346408 Stone lay motionless on the hard plastic mattress and stared at the underside of the bunk above. Every fifteen seconds it was illuminated by the glare of the searchlight on the south gun tower. His body ached all over, and his stomach was cramping again. After the bosses had found the radio, the rations had been cut for everyone in D block. The evening meal was down to half a cup of the pink goop and three slices of Wonder Bread. 4321921 Gotti, who had actually had the radio hidden in his mattress, had been dragged off to the bunker for three weeks' intensified. There was a great deal of speculation as to whether he would make it back. Since the radio had gone, a deep gloom had settled over the block. The radio, on which Gotti had picked up the news out of Canada, had been more than just a lifeline to the world beyond the wire of the Joshua Redemption Center. It was also more than just an antidote to the pap of game shows and preachers and the constant claptrap about Jesus, punishment, and repentance that blared from the TV from the moment the working parties returned to the barrack block clear through until lights-out sounded. It was a small but defiant symbol of the fact that the system had not totally broken them. It was hard to accept that their symbol was gone.

Stone's mind felt numb. He was convinced that they were putting hexapan in the food again. He wriggled in a vain attempt to get comfortable on the mattress and immediately let out a groan. His ribs were bruised on the left side where Boss Carter had lashed out with his billy club. Stone had not even been doing anything wrong. Everyone knew that Carter was a psycho who got his jollies inflicting pain. There was a scream from over in the women's section. Someone else was getting their kicks. The women suffered more at the hands of the guards than the men did. For a penal system that put such emphasis on morality, it harbored an extraordinary number of deviants.

Despite the fact that he was exhausted, sleep would not come. A few bunks away, someone was muttering in the throes of a bad dream. Someone else was coughing. That was probably 8368728 Katz. The general opinion was that Katz did not have much longer to go. After fourteen days in the bunker, he had come back with damaged lungs that had been getting progressively worse.

Stone closed his eyes. He could feel the anger building inside of him. It was the anger that had sustained him through the nineteen months that he had been in Joshua. During that time, he had learned that anger was something that could not just be squandered. If a person let it run loose as an unchecked rage, it either slowly consumed him or built up until he exploded in some suicidal outburst, until he attacked a guard or walked into the electrified wire. Anger was a thing that had to be conserved. It could not be allowed to blaze bright; but, on the other hand, if the spark went out, then one was nothing but an obedient zombie. Above all anger had to be focused and directed. It was fatally easy just to hate the immediate instruments of oppression, to center a bitter loathing on the guards or the deacons, or to silently rail against big generalities. It was too simple to hate the Fundamentalists or a figurehead like Faithful, or to damn all Christians and their bloody religion.